Simple and Delicious Beef Stew in a Crock Pot / Slow Cooker

I just found the easiest, most delicious beef stew recipe for the slow cooker/crock pot. Best part is it made two different meals! I’m not much of a meat eater, actually, but there’s something about slow-cooked beef and pork that makes me absolutely LOVE it. This recipe was so good, so easy, and low cost that it’s going to become an official recipe in the rotation. Which, is like, the highest form of flattery for a recipe.

Ingredients

1 package Stew Meat

2-3 potatoes, chopped

1-2 cups chopped carrots

2 packages French onion soup mix

1 tablespoon beef bouillon

2 tablespoons oil

Directions

Heat oil in a skillet and brown stew meat. Add chopped potatoes and carrots to the crock pot. Top with browned meat. Add soup mix and beef bouillon and as much water as you want. I made mine really brothy because I wasn’t sure how much water I’d need. I added about 6 cups of water. Which paid off for the second recipe (see below). Cook for 8 hours. Serve with crusty bread, or cheesy bread.

 

Night Two Ingredients

Leftover Stew

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

1 cup rice

Night Two Directions

Heat leftover stew and cook up some white or brown rice. When rice is done and stew is hot, melt the butter in a saucepan on medium heat and add flour. Stir together and heat up to make a roux. Slowly add about a cup at a time of stew broth until sauce is thick and creamy. Serve rice on bottom and use a slotted spoon to gather stew pieces and put on top of rice. Generously smother with your homemade gravy.

Making the roux

 

 

Ladel-ing some broth to add to the roux. Yes, I totally made up that word.

 

 

Home made gravy!

 

 

I thought the first night was good. This was even better. YUM!

And, since it’s Halloween, one of my favorite times of the year, here’s a picture of my fun crazy boys:

 

Red Beans and Rice

I’ve always wanted to make a red beans and rice type recipe that you hear all about from New Orleans.  The only trouble is I have children that won’t eat the spice and I am not a big fan of meat.  How do you accommodate the family?  Well here is what I came up with and I did the user-friendly Slow Cooker version.

In a skillet on Medium heat cook the:

Onion

Green Pepper

3-4 cloves of Garlic (garlic in everything for Rachel)

Trader Joe’s 21 Season Salute  or other spice favorites

(This is also where you would throw in some spicy cayenne pepper if you didn’t have kids.)

6 Chicken Sausages sliced up (or you could use the veggie dog substitute)

Throw the heated mix into your Slow Cooker along with the red beans.  (I used 2 cans but some better cooks soak their beans overnight.)  I also added 2 cups of cooked brown rice at this point, while others like to put their mix over the rice at serving time.

Very important!  Add 2+ cups of water (you could substitute broth) so it can simmer together.  I would add more depending on how long you are going to keep it in the Crockpot.

I’m sure my version doesn’t compare to the spicy, ham soaked original but I felt good about feeding my children something healthy and hot for the evening (plus you throw cheddar cheese on anything and they'll eat it!)  Those are the only two requirements.  The next night we ate leftovers (good with tortillas) after another full day of curriculum night, Walk a Thon, and work.

Here is a picture of Mason on the first night after a full day of school, piano lessons, soccer practice, and now eating standing up while doing homework.  This is the kind of month we are having.  I never thought I would be the family or mom that is signed up for everything.  We only do one sport at a time but things tend to all pile into one time/day and you end up saying yes to everything because you want things to go well for your children and follow through with your commitments.  I’ll let you know how that theory works out for me in the next year.

2-in-1 Meal: Carnitas to Pulled Pork & Caramelized Onion Paninis

Like Missy I went the slow cooker route with a Mexican theme. We had a few friends over for dinner so night one I made carnitas in the crock pot for tacos and then Curtis and I used the leftover meat for paninis, and then more tacos, and then paninis again and it went on and on - we had enough shredded meat for several meals!

Night 1: Carnitas

Ingredients:
Pork Butt or Shoulder
Rub made up of your favorite spices
Chicken broth
Can of tomatoes
Onion
Garlic
Chilies (optional)

Tortillas
Your favorite taco toppings such as cheese, cabbage, salsa, onions, cilantro, avocado, lime wedges and sour cream.

A day (or two) ahead rub your pork all over with your favorite spices (I used a 7 lb. pork shoulder from Costco and rubbed it with taco seasoning, chili powder, brown sugar, cumin and a few other random things I had in the spice cabinet - there's really no science to it). Place fat side up in the slow cooker and put in the fridge until the day you're ready to cook it.

That morning pour in some chicken broth, canned tomatoes, large chunks of onion, fresh garlic and dried chilies if you'd like. Cook on high for 8 - 10 hours until the meat is falling apart.

Shred the meat and use as carnitas for tacos.

Night 2: Pulled Pork Paninis 

Sourdough bread
Leftover pork
BBQ sauce
Onions, caramelized
Provalone cheese

Pile everything on your sandwich and toast in a panini press or frying pan.

And because babies are cuter than tacos and sandwiches, here's the latest of Graham:

Homemade Mexican-style Pinto Beans

I’ve always been a bit of an over-achiever. This month’s theme of 2 in 1 meals, turned out to be 4 in 1 meals. For as long as we have done this blog, I’ve looked for a good excuse to post my family favorite recipe: All Day Beans. They’re actually Mexican-style pinto beans but my husband started calling them “All Day Beans” because, well, they take all day. It is a very long and loving process in which I cook them, stir them, coach them, spice them, sweet talk them, and mash them to perfection. And in the end we have a huge bowl of beans that we can use all week. And we really do use them all week. My mother always made these beans when I was growing up and the smell of them cooking still reminds me of home. We call them Buggy's Beans, because, well, we call her Buggy. Which is a story for another time. My brother also has his own version...but I'm not sure what he calls them. I'll get back to you on that. All three of us make them a little bit differently.

Anyway, this is a dream recipe for any busy family. All it takes is one weekend day when the chef is home to create meals for the rest of the week. What follows is the recipe on how to make the beans and four examples of what you can do with them.

Ingredients:

·         One 32 oz. bag of dried pinto beans
·         10 cups water (at least)
·         ½ onion, not sliced or diced

·         1 overly ripe tomato, whole

·         4 cubes chicken bouillon (or a couple of healthy spoonful’s of chicken bouillon granules)

·         1 tablespoon dried oregano

·         A few healthy dashes of Tapatio (or equivalent)

·         Freshly ground pepper

·         2-3 cloves garlic, diced

·         One lime, squeezed

·         (SAVE THE SALT FOR LATER OR YOUR BEANS WILL BE TOUGH)

To Soak or not to Soak?

Disregard any and all instructions on the bean packaging. They will tell you to soak your beans overnight. But if you do that, the beans will soak up the flavor of water and not the flavor of the broth you’re about to cook them in and then they don’t taste nearly as good. Also, if you soak them ahead of time it takes less time to cook them. But you have all day, right? There’s also information out there that will tell you that soaking the beans will make you less gassy. Our family has not found that to be true. Beans are the musical fruit. Regardless of whether or not you soak them.

Directions

Cooking the beans will take at least 6 hours. So, by 10:00 a.m., Rinse your dried beans and put them in a large pot on the stove. I love using a Dutch Oven to cook these. Add 10 cups of water. (As the beans cook they will soak this water up like a sponge so you may have to add more eventually). Add half onion, whole tomato, chicken bouillon, dried oregano, dashes of Tapatio, freshly ground pepper, diced garlic, and a bit of lime juice. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium low, cover and simmer for a couple of hours.

Beans in a bath of yumminess

After a couple of hours, check your beans and make sure they have enough water. If most of the water is already soaked up by the beans, add about 2 more cups, stir, then cover up again. Check again in about an hour. In fact, you can check these babies as often as you want. It’s better to add water as you go than to start out with too much water and have watery beans in the end. You want just enough water to barely cover the top of the beans.

Perfect amount of water

As the onion gets really soft you can remove it. The tomato will disintegrate eventually. Cook beans for another 4 or so hours. Once the beans are really tender and soft they are done.

Done! Perfection!

You can keep them whole or mash them so they act like refried beans. I like to mash. 

Taste them to see if they need salt. If so, add a bit at a time. Over-salting the beans can be bad (I’ve done this) so it’s important to start with just a little. Especially because you’ll want to dip tortilla chips in them and those have salt on them too. Don’t ever salt the beans until after you cook them or they will get tough.

It looks like I'm about to feed you here. I'm sorry about that. It was a really yummy bite.

So, the beans are done! Yeah! Now, what can you do with them?

For the first night I made Chimichangas. Which is basically like a fried burrito. I filled tortillas with beans, cheese and chicken, wrapped them tightly, then fried them in a little bit of oil in a pan. Once they were golden brown on each side, I put them on a baking sheet covered with a paper towel and placed them in the oven on warm, which helps them dry out a bit and stay warm while I cook the rest. Top with guacamole, salsa and dashes of Tapatio. YUM!

These are my favorite new tortillas. They taste like corn but are malleable like flour.

Don't over-fill. You want your ingredients to stay inside.

Just a little bit of oil in the bottom of the pan will make you swear that you are eating a deep-fried burrito, except you can't figure out why you don't feel bad about yourself.

Pop in the oven on a paper towel and keep on warm until ready to serve.

Que Bonita.

After you make your first meal, put the beans in a big bowl and let them cool for a half hour. Then cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator.

Night two: Baked Burritos. Picture us coming home on a Monday evening, house is a mess from the morning hectic rush to get out of the house, kids are throwing their muddy, wet coats on the clean floor, and I cannot wait to get out of these shoes. This one is so easy. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees, fill tortilla with whatever you want on the inside (leftover chicken, cold beans, cold cheese, jalapeno slices) and wrap into a burrito. Then wrap that in tinfoil, stab a hole for ventilation in the top, and pop in the oven for 45 minutes. If you’re in a rush, use the microwave. Without the tinfoil, obviously.

On the third night Andy was out of town, so I fed the kids bagels for dinner, put them to bed and did what I just LOVE to do when I’m alone: Watch episodes of Glee while eating nachos and drinking wine. I heated a bowl of beans for dipping. It just so happened to be the episode on guilty pleasures. Perfect!

Night four: I’m sick of beans. Let’s take a break.

Night five: one of my absolute favorites! Mexican Lasagna! Take a pie dish, spray with non-stick spray and then layer: One tortilla, top that with a thick layer of beans and cheese, then add another tortilla, top that with chicken, salsa and cheese, then another tortilla, and top that with salsa and cheese. Cover with tinfoil and bake on 350 for about 30 minutes. Then remove the tinfoil and bake an additional 15 or until everything is bubbly and saucy. You can put anything in a Mexican lasagna and layer however you want. Just make sure you use either salsa or enchilada sauce or it will come out too dry.

And that is it, my friends. You truly are only limited by your creativity. And though it may seem intimidating at first, I urge you to try this. With time you'll perfect your very own recipe.
  

2-in-1 Meal: SW Chicken and Beans to Queso Cheese Enchiladas

Lately I've been into slow-cooker shredded chicken over rice, mainly using salsa or fire-roasted diced tomatoes and a few shakes of taco seasoning. When I discovered what to do with the leftovers, this 2-in-1 meal quickly became part of our regular dinner rotation...

Night 1: Slow-Cooker Southwest Chicken and Black Beans over Rice

2-4 large chicken breasts, fresh or frozen
2 cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes
2 cans tomato sauce
1 can green chilies
1 packet taco seasoning
1/2 small can of sliced black olives (reserve other half for night 2)
1 can black beans, rinsed
Optional: chopped onion and/or sliced bell pepper
Salt and pepper, few shakes of each

If the chicken is frozen, give it a couple hours on high in the crock-pot and once it is thawed, add everything else but the olives, bell pepper (if using) and black beans. Turn the heat to low and let it cook 4-5 hours in the tomato goodness. During the last hour of cooking, add the bell peppers, olives, and black beans. Stir well. Dish up and serve over rice.

Whatever is left, rice and all, mix it all up and put it in a container to be used for enchilada filling for night 2.

Night 2: Queso Cheese Chicken Enchiladas

Filling from night 1
Flour tortillas
Mexican blend shredded cheese
Enchilada sauce (I no longer make my own ench sauce because I love TJ's bottled stuff)
Chili con queso cheese sauce
Optional: sour cream, leftover black olives

Drizzle a little enchilada sauce in baking dish,enough to cover the bottom. On a separate plate, warm tortillas in oven or microwave and load them up with chicken filling and shredded cheese. I stuffed about 7, enough to fill one baking dish. Cover with enchilada sauce. Then layer queso cheese sauce on top. Top with leftover olives. Cook at 375 for 30 minutes, covered. Serve with a heaping dollop of sour cream and stuff yourself!